in the water chemistry tool in Beer Tools does HDNS mean "Hardness"? if so my water report has a section for hardness but it refers to it as "CaC03" if i put this number in the HDNS field, what do i put in the HC03 section? i dont see a corresponding field on my water report.

and also what should i put in my "Totals" field? the amount of water in my mash tun? or what ends up in my kettle? or the total of all of my infusions, including sparge water?

i am just trying to break my habit of using the 5.2 additive and am also wondering about the additions that i would put in the "Water chemistry tool" do i add all of these to the mash tun or some to the kettle?

BTP will calculate HDNS (yes, hardness) for you from your other numbers.

The number you want for HCO3 is going to be called HCO3 or Alkalinity as CaCO3 (or maybe just Alkalinity).

Totals would typically be all of your entire water volume, unless you only want to use salts to control the mash pH, then it would only be the volume of the mash infusion. If you set your base volume in the field above, the Total will be automatically filled in.

If you're adding salts to all your water, add the proportionate amount of salts to the mash tun and the kettle (or the sparge water, but it can be difficult to get some salts into solution, CaCO3 in particular). For example, if you used 8 gallons of water, with 5 into the mash and 3 for the sparge, you could add 5/8ths of the salts to the mash and 3/8ths to the kettle. Or you could just calculate for 5 gallons and add it to the mash to control pH.

so i added some acidulated malt (just messing around with the system) to my grain bill and it did not change the ph in my water chemistry window, do i need to do anything special to get it to register? i did not see a way to add grain in the water chemistry window.

The RA is a function of your water and isn't affected by your recipe and the pH is the projected pH of an all-base malt mash.

You need to use another tool to determine the RA that your recipe needs to hit pH. One popular one is John Palmer's spreadsheet at the bottom of this page. I used that to generate this graph which I find to be quicker for getting the RA from SRM:
With these tools, you need to consider the target RA to be +/- 30 and aim for the high end of the range if your SRM comes from mostly Crystal Malt, the low end if the color comes from mostly Roasted Malt and somewhere in the middle if it's a mix. (e.g., if your SRM is 7.5, your target RA is 0 +/- 30, or -30 to +30.)

Both of those methods will give you a pretty good quick and dirty estimate of the RA you need for a recipe, but you may find that you need to make corrections in the tun. It seems to work for me most of the time, but people seem to have more problems as recipes hit the extremes of the SRM ranges and when more extreme water salt additions are called for.

For the calculator that most accurately takes into account the acidity of Crystal and Roasted Malts, look at Kai Troester's spreadsheet here. The only problem with that spreadsheet is that it requires you to enter all of your water salt information to get a pH estimate.

For Acidulated Malt, one way to calculate the amount needed is to use this graph, also from Kai Troester. It will tell you how much of a pH shift you will get for a given percentage of Acidulated Malt at a given mash thickness. Kai's spreadsheet will also allow you to calculate the effect of different percentages of Acid Malt on pH.

If I haven't said it already, here's some unsolicited advice: Go easy on the salt additions at first. Try to get where you need to be with the least addition necessary. I've seen a few people go to town, trying to match water profiles from specific cities that were radically different than their own, only to be disappointed that their beer tastes "salty".

If you like the results you get from small additions, you can then try increasing the amounts on subsequent batches, if you're looking for more effect.

i just got done listening to 3 hrs of the brew strong pod casts on water and John Palmer had the same advice, so i am mainly trying to hit the right RA and the same chloride and sulfur ratio that my target city has.

it seems like i can do this without over "seasoning" the beer.

Thanks as always!! you might have to send me your mailing address so i can send you a "thank you" i just finished some pretty tasty Belgians. oh and i never did that light American pils for my wife, i opted for a CAP, just did not want to risk ruining that much wort = )

can you PM me and i will give you my email address so you can get me your info (if you would like).

I wish I could have seen Kai's talk. He's done some great work defining mash conditions and their effects on a homebrewing scale. His efficiency spreadsheet is really worth taking a look at, too, if you want to better understand conversion and extraction in your mash/lauter tun.

slothrob wrote:The number you want for HCO3 is going to be called HCO3 or Alkalinity as CaCO3 (or maybe just Alkalinity).

I was just re-reading John Palmer's How to Brew Chapter 15 and see that he says to get from Alkalinity as CaCO3 to [HCO3], you should divide alkalinity by 50 and multiply times 61 (or just multiply times 1.22.)

That shouldn't make a huge difference for you, though, just 57 instead of 47.